Full Transcript for Defining the American Evangelical Movement: Born Again (Episode 1)

a messenger from God. 00:05:19.279 --> 00:05:25.279 As Whitfield preached the gospel, Cole felt pangs of conviction, a heart wound, he called it. 00:05:25.519 --> 00:05:28.399 It was as if Whitfield were speaking directly to him. 00:05:28.879 --> 00:05:37.279 Cole realized that all his efforts at goodness and righteousness were like dirty rags, and he couldn't save himself by his own good works. 00:05:37.759 --> 00:05:39.279 He thus grew terrified. 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:44.000 What must he do to be saved from the fires of eternal damnation? 00:05:45.279 --> 00:05:51.279 For nearly two years after this experience, Nathan Cole struggled with his sense of sin and guilt. 00:05:51.920 --> 00:05:59.120 He tried to hide his misery from family and friends, but his spiritual journey drained all the joy from his life. 00:05:59.759 --> 00:06:02.319 He couldn't eat, he couldn't sleep. 00:06:02.959 --> 00:06:08.879 Then one day, as Cole walked out of his house to work in his field, he started to pray. 00:06:09.680 --> 00:06:14.480 As he walked and prayed, he had an experience that was hard to describe. 00:06:14.800 --> 00:06:19.279 He felt that God was showing him the way to salvation through Jesus Christ. 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:22.879 Suddenly, everything became clear. 00:06:23.519 --> 00:06:28.240 He experienced God's grace and realized the simplicity of faith. 00:06:28.720 --> 00:06:30.480 And he was no longer afraid. 00:06:30.800 --> 00:06:36.560 The encounter was so overwhelming that he lay down in his field until this feeling passed. 00:06:36.879 --> 00:06:42.160 Later, Nathan Cole went inside his farmhouse and wrote everything down. 00:06:42.560 --> 00:06:47.759 Today you can find his diary at the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford. 00:06:52.639 --> 00:07:02.160 Welcome to American Evangelicals, a history podcast, where we explore the people, ideas, and movements that have shaped evangelicalism in the United States. 00:07:02.399 --> 00:07:12.639 Hosted by historians John Fiat, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra, this series takes a deeper look at a movement that is often talked about, but not always well understood. 00:07:12.879 --> 00:07:17.120 In this opening episode, we begin with a deceptively simple question. 00:07:17.360 --> 00:07:19.040 What is an evangelical? 00:07:19.279 --> 00:07:24.720 It's a question that has sparked debate among historians, theologians, and believers for generations. 00:07:24.959 --> 00:07:30.720 And rather than settling for an easy answer, we're starting where history often does, with a story. 00:07:30.959 --> 00:07:45.360 From the fields of 18th century New England to the rise of revival culture, we'll explore how ordinary people experienced something they called the new birth, and how those experiences helped shape a movement that would grow far beyond its origins. 00:07:45.600 --> 00:07:50.000 This episode is one of a three-part introduction to evangelicalism. 00:07:50.959 --> 00:07:54.399 Welcome everyone to our discussion of American Evangelicalism. 00:07:54.560 --> 00:07:56.480 It's a multi-part podcast. 00:07:56.639 --> 00:08:04.399 And what we want to accomplish in this episode and in the first three episodes, really, is we want to think about evangelicalism broadly. 00:08:04.560 --> 00:08:08.959 You know, how are we going to be defining evangelicalism in this podcast? 00:08:09.120 --> 00:08:13.839 You know, what are some of the issues related to that uh definition of evangelicalism? 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:21.360 How should we think about uh historical dimensions of this movement, which has plays such a prominent role in uh American history? 00:08:21.600 --> 00:08:34.000 So, again, for the next three episodes, Dan and Maggie and I will be flying high at the 30,000 uh feet mark, trying to just kind of get some of these definitional issues out of the way. 00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:41.120 And then in later episodes, we'll dive in a little more deeper into some themes and other things throughout evangelical history. 00:08:41.360 --> 00:08:45.919 So, with that in mind, John, why did you pick the story of Nathan Cole to get us started? 00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:50.000 I guess I'm the 18th century person uh in this group. 00:08:50.159 --> 00:08:55.440 I've studied the Great Awakening and 18th century American evangelicalism. 00:08:55.600 --> 00:09:21.679 I've always been fascinated by this Cole diary, not just because it has things in there about conversion and people being saved and, you know, Cole kind of encountering George Whitfield, but it shows you the way in which an ordinary New England farmer can get caught up in this evangelical movement, this first great awakening that's uh pervading the British American colonies in the 18th century. 00:09:21.840 --> 00:09:23.440 It's such a fascinating piece. 00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:30.480 I think I I'm trying to remember, I think it was found some some historian, they first published it in the William and Mary Quarterly. 00:09:30.639 --> 00:09:35.440 They dug it out of uh uh randomly came upon it at the Connecticut Historical Society. 00:09:35.519 --> 00:09:40.559 And since then, biographers of Whitfield and have have used it and have focused on it. 00:09:40.720 --> 00:09:46.960 I know the historian Harry Stout uh made it a feature of his biography of uh of George Whitfield. 00:09:47.039 --> 00:09:54.639 But I think it captures several key elements of the way I think uh we want to talk about evangelicalism in this podcast, right? 00:09:54.799 --> 00:09:56.240 You have the new birth, right? 00:09:56.320 --> 00:10:09.120 The born-again experience of Nathan Cole, you have George Whitfield as kind of a celebrity figure, you have um, you know, the crowds and people crying out, what must I do to be saved? 00:10:09.279 --> 00:10:09.440 Right. 00:10:09.600 --> 00:10:21.759 You have you have this idea of an evangelicalism that clearly seems to transcend denominations and things and sort of news and the spreading of the word of

uh the revivals going around. 00:10:21.919 --> 00:10:27.440 So I think all of these things are there in this story, at least in the 18th century version, right? 00:10:27.519 --> 00:10:28.000 I think so. 00:10:28.080 --> 00:10:30.879 I think the new birth is really central, I think, here. 00:10:31.120 --> 00:10:35.039 And I think it's central to the way I understand, and maybe we can debate this, right? 00:10:35.120 --> 00:10:39.039 But but I understand uh the meaning of evangelicalism. 00:10:39.120 --> 00:10:43.440 The the born-again experience is in many ways a central component. 00:10:43.919 --> 00:10:53.200 And maybe thinking about maybe just asking how central is it, or or what makes the way that evangelicals think about being born again distinct? 00:10:53.440 --> 00:11:02.960 You know, the the term itself comes from Jesus talking to Nicodemus, or at least that's how a lot of English speakers think of it, where Jesus explains you must be born again. 00:11:03.200 --> 00:11:08.799 Um so this is something that all Christians to some extent share, at least the that text. 00:11:09.120 --> 00:11:24.320 What about uh, and maybe this gets into like what evangelicals actually think is happening when being born again happen is taking place, but what's distinct about that for evangelicals, uh maybe different than other Protestants, even and then other Christians? 00:11:24.720 --> 00:11:35.679 You know, there's been a lot of discussion uh in the kind of way historians have been thinking lately about evangelicalism that kind of downplays sort of these theological principles, right? 00:11:35.759 --> 00:11:38.879 Whether it be, you know, you have the old Bebington quadrilateral, right? 00:11:39.039 --> 00:11:41.279 Which is I think it's still relevant. 00:11:41.679 --> 00:11:42.720 Maybe explain that for people. 00:11:42.799 --> 00:11:42.960 Yeah. 00:11:43.360 --> 00:11:43.440 Yeah. 00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:49.840 Um so the Bebington quadrilateral uh is associated with a historian of British evangelicalism. 00:11:49.919 --> 00:12:00.080 Uh his name is David Bebington, but it has really taken on a kind of life of its own in the States as well, about how to define evangelicals. 00:12:00.480 --> 00:12:01.840 What is an evangelical? 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:08.000 And it's really based on certain theological principles, four of them, thus obviously a quadrilateral. 00:12:08.159 --> 00:12:12.159 Uh, the first one is uh what Bebington calls conversionism. 00:12:12.399 --> 00:12:20.399 In other words, evangelicals believe that the central moment of a Christian's life is the born-again experience, the conversion. 00:12:20.639 --> 00:12:34.320 In order to be truly saved, have eternal life, become a Christian, you must encounter God, believe in his death, burial, and resurrection for your sins, and accept that at some point in your life. 00:12:34.399 --> 00:12:37.919 You know, literally say a sinner's prayer, maybe, or something to that effect. 00:12:38.159 --> 00:12:45.440 So evangelicals are defined by conversionism, uh, perhaps in a way that other forms of Christianity are not. 00:12:45.679 --> 00:12:58.480 Uh, second, uh, in the Bebington quadrilateral is this idea of Biblicism, that the Bible is inspired, it is the word of God, and it has authority over your life. 00:12:58.799 --> 00:13:13.279 Now, Biblicism, you know, is also a characteristic of other forms of Christianity as well, but put it together with conversionism and the next two isms I'm going to talk about, you have what Bebington calls an evangelical. 00:13:13.600 --> 00:13:17.519 So, third then would be crucicentrism. 00:13:17.840 --> 00:13:27.759 Uh, and that's just a big word for saying Jesus' death on the cross paid for the sins of individuals, paid for the sins of the world, right? 00:13:27.919 --> 00:13:29.360 Jesus died for your sins. 00:13:29.440 --> 00:13:40.720 What happened on Good Friday was that Jesus took the weight of the world's sins on himself and paid the price of death so that we don't have to, right? 00:13:40.799 --> 00:13:43.519 Well, obviously we'll physically die, but we'll have eternal life. 00:13:43.840 --> 00:13:46.799 Add that to conversionism and biblicism. 00:13:46.960 --> 00:13:49.679 And then the fourth one is activism. 00:13:49.840 --> 00:13:53.200 And this is Bebington understands this in a couple of ways. 00:13:53.360 --> 00:13:58.399 One is through evangelism, evangelicals want to share their faith with others. 00:13:58.639 --> 00:14:06.799 If they have the message of salvation and eternal life, it's only natural that they will want to share that with others so that they can experience eternal life as well. 00:14:06.960 --> 00:14:12.639 So here would be an example of like Billy Graham, right, preaching the gospel, getting people saved. 00:14:12.879 --> 00:14:41.200 And then a secondary aspect of activism is just being engaged in dealing with injustice in the world, you know, reforming institutions, trying to bring Christianity to bear on all of the kind of social ills, whether it be everything from abortion to slavery to racism, you know, whatever the case might happen to be as evangelicals understand them, but there's a certain activist impulse within evangelicalism. 00:14:41.440 --> 00:14:55.279 So when you put those four things together: conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism, you have a kind of theological religious definition of an evangelical. 00:14:55.440 --> 00:15:07.279 So, so, you know, the critique has been that all Christian religions, and I think I even once heard a Catholic, right, making an argument that, you know, we believe in these four things too. 00:15:07.600 --> 00:15:12.559 But I think, I think if you would pick the most important of the four that really, and in some ways that's true. 00:15:12.639 --> 00:15:14.159 That critique is true, right? 00:15:14.320 --> 00:15:17.200 You know, Catholics certainly have an understanding of conversion. 00:15:17.440 -->

00:15:25.200 But in my, at least in my view, and again, I'd love to get your feedback on this, the new birth seems to be the central component. 00:15:25.279 --> 00:15:31.600 Uh, or, or as I think I say it, I said it in the opening story, the instantaneous new birth. 00:15:31.759 --> 00:15:33.440 Now, Cole, it took two years. 00:15:33.600 --> 00:15:41.759 So, you know, this looks a little more like one of these old 17th-century Puritan conversions where it takes forever to be prepared. 00:15:41.919 --> 00:15:46.000 You'd have to prepare yourself, you have to understand the depths of your sin and so forth. 00:15:46.240 --> 00:15:56.320 But I think there's no other brand of Christianity out there that has this kind of point of salvation, you know, this kind of road to Damascus. 00:15:56.399 --> 00:16:06.399 Now, I'm sure there's other denominations out there and other forms of Christianity that could point to examples where someone saw the light and was converted, but they wouldn't be central to the story. 00:16:06.559 --> 00:16:17.200 You know, if uh evangelicals can talk about their spiritual birthday, you know, if you've heard that, you know, there's this moment when I was saved, and sometimes it's like I was six years old, or sometimes it was the more driven. 00:16:17.840 --> 00:16:18.320 I was seven. 00:16:18.480 --> 00:16:18.879 There you go. 00:16:19.120 --> 00:16:19.360 Yeah. 00:16:19.600 --> 00:16:22.960 And it's but some sometimes it's more dramatic than that, right? 00:16:23.120 --> 00:16:27.360 It's like, you know, I'm thinking of Nicky Cruz and the cross and the switchblade, right? 00:16:27.440 --> 00:16:32.720 You know, this uh gang member who gets saved under the ministry of David Wilkerson. 00:16:32.960 --> 00:16:46.399 I don't think that other Christian groups place so much prime, you know, it's it's not as important, that instantaneous new birth in the way that evangelicals think about it. 00:16:46.720 --> 00:16:50.399 So, you know, I guess that's what makes an evangelical different. 00:16:50.559 --> 00:16:54.159 You you could identify, like when evangelicals talk about their conversion, right? 00:16:54.240 --> 00:16:57.200 You know that that's an evangelical by the way they're talking about it. 00:16:57.440 --> 00:16:59.519 You know, so at least that's the way I see it. 00:16:59.600 --> 00:17:11.440 I think the Bebington quadrilateral, especially the idea of the new birth, makes evangelicalism, I'm not saying a better or less, you know, but a different form of form of Christian faith. 00:17:11.839 --> 00:17:14.640 Well, I mean, uh just going into the root of the word, right? 00:17:14.720 --> 00:17:16.559 That idea that there's this emphasis on the good news. 00:17:16.880 --> 00:17:17.279 Good news. 00:17:17.519 --> 00:17:25.039 Um, and it's so many times when you're looking at the sources, that emphasis on spreading the good news or putting the gospel first, right? 00:17:25.200 --> 00:17:33.599 And we can look at ways that that has been um really a gift for evangelicalism and sometimes a way of setting aside other major concerns, right? 00:17:33.759 --> 00:17:39.839 Saying, well, for you know, the sake of the gospel, we won't talk about segregation or we're not going to approach slavery. 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:41.599 Things like that um happen. 00:17:41.759 --> 00:17:43.839 But it is because of that centrality of the good news. 00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:55.359 So it does make sense that these conversions would be so central to people's stories because that's how they envision and shape their entire religious experiences around that one component. 00:17:55.519 --> 00:17:58.880 And of course, that is central to any religion. 00:17:58.960 --> 00:18:04.720 They're going to believe that they have a sense of good news, um, but it is certainly imagined differently within evangelicalism. 00:18:05.039 --> 00:18:06.400 I think of two things here. 00:18:06.559 --> 00:18:14.079 One is there's a really good book, it's probably 20 years old now by Bruce Heinmarsh, the historian of of early British evangelicalism. 00:18:14.240 --> 00:18:19.839 And the the title of that book is The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England. 00:18:19.920 --> 00:18:29.839 And his point there is not only is the conversion usually the high point of someone's telling about their own life, but it's actually the way they interpret their whole life. 00:18:29.920 --> 00:18:35.359 It's sort of like if you think of the you know, the classic hymn Amazing Grace, I once was lost, but now and found. 00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:37.119 And there's sort of like a switch that happens. 00:18:37.519 --> 00:18:40.480 You were in the state of being lost, and now you're in the state of being found. 00:18:40.799 --> 00:18:45.200 That is very important how you tell your story, but it's also sort of how you interpret other people. 00:18:45.519 --> 00:18:47.200 Are they lost or are they found? 00:18:47.359 --> 00:18:51.519 And how you interpret society and culture and other things. 00:18:51.680 --> 00:19:01.200 So that was one thing I thought about is it's it's it's really important in the way that evangelicals understand their own lives, but also how they just interpret the world as pre or post-conversion. 00:19:01.440 --> 00:19:29.599 Um, and then the other thing, and and this this will we'll be talking about this over and over again, is because of the way that uh evangelicals and evangelicalism have been shaped by American culture and and even like popular political culture, you know, you can't get away from talking about born again without thinking about the 1970s and the polling that came out in 1976 in particular around who in America says they're born again. 00:19:29.839 --> 00:19:33.119 Um there was not a death, this was Gallup uh polling at the time. 00:19:33.279 --> 00:19:40.079 And this was during the campaign of Jimmy Carter, who was, you know, called himself an evangelical and talked

about being born again. 00:19:40.319 --> 00:19:48.880 And that poll, the the polling in 1976 said that about a third of Americans claim they were born again, which is a huge, you know, it was sort of a shocking number to a lot of people. 00:19:49.119 --> 00:19:53.680 And since then we've we've sort of used that shorthand to even describe what are evangelicals. 00:19:53.839 --> 00:19:55.359 Well, they're the people who say they're born again. 00:19:55.519 --> 00:19:59.359 Uh, without defining that in any more specific way, it's sort of a self-identification. 00:19:59.519 --> 00:20:04.480 And you can imagine there's a hundred different, a thousand different ways people would actually define that if you ask them. 00:20:04.720 --> 00:20:14.880 But that's a big part of what it means to be an evangelical in contemporary culture is to identify with that born-again word, even though there's not a lot, um, perhaps for some people at least, there's not a lot of heft to that word. 00:20:15.039 --> 00:20:21.759 There's not a lot under that term, but it's still so closely associated with what we think of as evangelicals today. 00:20:27.200 --> 00:20:40.319 Thinking back to the 18th century, one thing that strikes me, I mean, and you see this with Whitfield, you see this with the Wesley brothers, is also a separation through their conversion experience with their past religious experiences. 00:20:40.640 --> 00:20:44.079 Like they all were raised to be very religious. 00:20:44.240 --> 00:20:49.839 Um, both the Wesleys were missionaries in Georgia before their conversion experiences, right? 00:20:50.160 --> 00:21:00.400 And so you have men of the cloth, if you want to put it that way, like they're they're ministers, and yet they have not yet come to that conversion experience. 00:21:00.559 --> 00:21:06.799 And so I think that's also another part of the early evangelical story in 18th century, well, the Atlantic world, right? 00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:09.680 Because it wasn't just the American colonies that are going through this. 00:21:09.759 --> 00:21:19.119 This is a very British phenomenon as well, that they are changing their relationship between themselves and their spiritual selves, right? 00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:21.599 Like that, that there's a fundamental shift there. 00:21:21.680 --> 00:21:27.920 And that's going to cause a lot of friction with the established churches who thought they were doing just fine. 00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:29.039 Thank you very much. 00:21:29.279 --> 00:21:39.119 Uh, and uh the people that are are starting to take some of the same theological ideas that existed before, but applying them in new ways. 00:21:39.200 --> 00:21:54.400 And so I think that's also one of the things that makes evangelicalism murky is that um to your point, John, when you said that like the the Nathan Cole story shows this like ecumenicalism, like there's an interdenominational component to it, right? 00:21:54.559 --> 00:21:56.960 Whitfield, he was always a member of the Church of England, right? 00:21:57.039 --> 00:21:57.680 He never left. 00:21:57.759 --> 00:22:07.359 Uh, and that yet he's here, you know, he's at a Congregationalist thing, but like there's all these other like he refused to go by denominational lines. 00:22:07.440 --> 00:22:09.599 He would preach at where they invited him. 00:22:09.680 --> 00:22:17.279 Uh and so it wasn't a new shift to a brand new, this is the evangelical denomination, right? 00:22:17.599 --> 00:22:22.400 Which when people ask, you know, students are always asking, why is it so hard to define evangelicalism? 00:22:22.559 --> 00:22:28.880 And it's because it's kind of everywhere all at once and yet not anything too specific. 00:22:28.960 --> 00:22:32.480 Uh and then you look at, and this is why we're doing three different episodes on this, right? 00:22:32.640 --> 00:22:34.640 Because there's different ways of even defining it. 00:22:34.799 --> 00:22:37.440 So you can see the quadrilateral's usefulness, right? 00:22:37.519 --> 00:22:40.319 We need some kind of boundary, we need something to kind of judge. 00:22:40.480 --> 00:22:44.720 Yet at the same time, it does appear in very different places. 00:22:44.960 --> 00:22:48.559 Um, Dan, you brought the rise of evangelicalism by Mark Knoll. 00:22:48.640 --> 00:22:59.599 Uh, and in that, like he talks about the fact that in the series that they're laying out, they're gonna start with certain groups, but Catholic and Quakers are gonna align with evangelicals at later points. 00:22:59.680 --> 00:23:02.079 They're not really part of it in the 18th century. 00:23:02.240 --> 00:23:06.799 They'll become part of evangelicalism and sort of enter the fold and exit the fold and things. 00:23:07.200 --> 00:23:15.119 And so that's part of what makes this so difficult is that there are these very diverse ways of looking at evangelicalism. 00:23:15.279 --> 00:23:20.160 And that's kind of the fun of these first three episodes, is that we get to look at the different inlets into it. 00:23:20.559 --> 00:23:32.160 Your point about the 18th century evangelicals, Maggie, is is really a really good one in the way in which there clearly was a distinct way of thinking about Christianity. 00:23:32.240 --> 00:23:38.480 You know, or else why would you have like the new light, old light, new side, old side debates? 00:23:38.640 --> 00:23:51.440 I mean, clearly you have people like Gilbert Tennant, this mid-Atlantic New Jersey uh preacher who's trained by his father in the log college, off the grid, if you will, from the major colleges at the time. 00:23:51.599 --> 00:23:53.440 You know, he's traveling around. 00:23:53.680 --> 00:23:54.720 He's calling out. 00:23:54.799 --> 00:23:59.359 I mean, Whitfield does some of this too, calling out unconverted ministers. 00:23:59.519 --> 00:24:09.039 Now, when he walks into these churches or these, usually he's in a field and he's because he's not allowed in the churches, Gilbert Tennant is suggesting that

they're not saved. 00:24:09.200 --> 00:24:14.160 And I think the local minister is saying, like, I've been, I've been the pastor of this church for 30 years. 00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:26.160 I'm a Christian, I give the sacraments, I'm, you know, I believe one needs to have a conversion experience, but it has to happen within the bounds of the local congregation under my leadership. 00:24:26.400 --> 00:24:29.119 And suddenly this guy's coming in and saying, I'm not saved. 00:24:29.279 --> 00:24:42.559 Like, forget about all the social implications of that in 18 in an 18th-century village where the entire community is then divided between the pro-awakening and anti pro-evangelical, anti-evangelical, they probably wouldn't have called them by those terms. 00:24:42.720 --> 00:24:55.440 But there clearly is some kind of new birth movement defined by the new birth that separates these different forms of mostly reformed, in some ways, Christians. 00:24:55.599 --> 00:25:06.640 I mean, you can't say that, you know, Charles Chauncey in this Boston minister and Jonathan Edwards both embrace the sort of Bebington quadrilateral in the same way. 00:25:06.799 --> 00:25:10.559 There's a clear difference there, you know, in the 18th century context. 00:25:10.720 --> 00:25:20.000 So I've never bought into the argument that I hear certain historians making about the Bebington quadrilateral is not helpful because it defines any Christian group, right? 00:25:20.160 --> 00:25:25.519 Anyone who knows the 18th century knows it's not a historical, verifiable kind of thing. 00:25:25.920 --> 00:25:35.839 So um just to kind of clarify for folks, because I know we fall into definitions and use our terminology, but what do you mean specifically by it being mostly reformed at this time? 00:25:36.240 --> 00:25:52.079 Yeah, I you know, I probably took some liberties uh by saying that, but I think the Great Awakening, the evangelical movement in the colonies is largely going to be among congregational, Presbyterian, traditional Calvinist denominations. 00:25:52.400 --> 00:25:54.240 Now, that's in the colonies. 00:25:54.480 --> 00:25:59.119 I think you mentioned Maggie the Wesleys before, who clearly reject Calvinism. 00:25:59.200 --> 00:26:04.640 And this is one of the divisions between Whitfield and Wesley, who the Wesleys, who they're good friends, right? 00:26:04.799 --> 00:26:09.839 But one is more free will, one is um Calvinist, Whitfield being the Calvinist. 00:26:10.079 --> 00:26:22.799 But I don't think you find prior to, say, 1760, a kind of Wesleyan movement until you get kind of Francis Asbury kind of starting to move through the colonies. 00:26:22.880 --> 00:26:28.559 You don't really get in the late colonial period, you don't really have a lot of kind of Wesleyan types. 00:26:28.720 --> 00:26:41.039 They're mostly like the descendants of the Puritans in New England, and they're the descendants of the Scottish, Scots-Irish Presbyterians who settle in the middle colonies,

you know, for the most part. 00:26:41.119 --> 00:26:53.599 And then in the South, right, you have some Anglicans, you know, who come on board, but most of the awakening takes place among these minority groups of what the English would call dissenters, right? 00:26:53.680 --> 00:26:59.920 So you have like Samuel Davies, who's, you know, was one of the presidents of Princeton at one point, who was really the big evangelist. 00:27:00.079 --> 00:27:05.920 The Whitfield of the South was, you know, a Presbyterian who was mostly preaching to these reformed congregations. 00:27:06.160 --> 00:27:07.119 So that's what I mean by that. 00:27:07.200 --> 00:27:13.440 I don't want to, I don't want to be too strong on that, you know, but but it's I think that's just kind of true of the landscape. 00:27:13.759 --> 00:27:21.359 I think it's an interesting, from the perspective of today, it can seem confusing to recognize that that's the history of the first great awakening. 00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:26.480 And so we're talking like 1730s through the 17, whatever, 50s or 60s. 00:27:26.640 --> 00:27:26.799 Yeah. 00:27:27.279 --> 00:27:44.880 Um, that a lot of it is the people that are descended from Calvin and Calvinism, because we often associate today revivals and dramatic conversion stories with non-Calvinists, with Pentecostals, with uh what we'd call the holiness movement, or with like Methodists and Wesleyan branches. 00:27:45.039 --> 00:27:58.000 And those definitely come, but but when we get to the first Great Awakening, it's it's really a debate within the Reformed or Calvinist world about these questions of conversion, of predestination, of these things that are sort of like issues within within that um group. 00:27:58.160 --> 00:28:02.640 So yeah, it's a it's a it's a different world where we mentioned a few minutes ago the old lights and the new lights. 00:28:02.720 --> 00:28:11.039 And so these are like the two camps that are interpreting the revivals, the old lights being more skeptical of them and the new lights being more embracing of them. 00:28:11.279 --> 00:28:15.440 And both of those camps are largely coming out of the same theological tradition. 00:28:15.599 --> 00:28:28.079 That's part of the the story of evangelicalism as we track it through is sort of how these influences that go all the way back to the Reformation, some even before, play out in in in different sort of streams of what we still all call evangelical. 00:28:28.319 --> 00:28:29.759 There's so many things there, Dan. 00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.480 Well, first of all, just a plug, uh the the the Wesleyan holiness crowd is coming, right? 00:28:34.720 --> 00:28:36.559 Stay tuned for future episodes. 00:28:36.799 --> 00:28:39.039 I mean, that I hear that from my students a lot. 00:28:39.200 --> 00:28:46.400 This real confusion over the first Great Awakening, then what becomes the second great awakening, because they're both known for their like immense emotionalism. 00:28:46.559 --> 00:28:52.160 And students who hear congregationalists and know that connection to Puritans can't imagine Puritans being emotional. 00:28:52.319 --> 00:28:58.480 Like it just there's like this block there that was like, oh no, no, these are the the churches that we don't affiliate with this kind of emotionalism. 00:28:58.640 --> 00:29:02.079 Baptists and Methodists with the second great awakening makes a little bit more sense. 00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:03.039 We can get into that. 00:29:03.119 --> 00:29:05.599 That seems to be a easier line to pull through. 00:29:05.759 --> 00:29:10.559 But when you look at what's going on with Whitfield, that's what the Cole story does so well, right? 00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:13.519 Is you see this intense emotion. 00:29:13.680 --> 00:29:14.880 And it was astonishing. 00:29:14.960 --> 00:29:26.400 I mean, just for those who don't know much about Whitfield, I mean, he pulled in crowds of thousands upon thousands of people, so much so that Benjamin Franklin did his little experiment because he didn't believe the claims, right? 00:29:26.559 --> 00:29:31.279 Because Whitfield gets really good at advertising and he publicizes how many people show up to his provider. 00:29:31.680 --> 00:29:32.640 Just a quick thing on that. 00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:32.880 Yeah. 00:29:33.119 --> 00:29:35.440 There was you can you can Google this somewhere. 00:29:35.519 --> 00:29:59.680 Um, but there was like an NYU uh modern day, like 21st century NYU audiology class study that went to Market Street in Philadelphia, where Franklin did that experiment and used like, I don't know, some kind of sound technology and concluded that Franklin was almost exactly right in the amount in the crowd that he estimated being there in Philadelphia that day. 00:29:59.839 --> 00:30:06.240 They estimated how, you know, I don't know how they figured out how loud Whitfield's voice was, but it's a legitimate academic study, you know. 00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:07.519 Oh, that's pretty fascinating. 00:30:07.680 --> 00:30:11.839 Yeah, because I mean Franklin, you know, he's he's that scientist, scientific-minded person. 00:30:11.920 --> 00:30:20.079 He talks about how many steps he walked, you know, and he's like, all right, I'm you know, I looked at and I mapped it out using I always I always picture him going like that that commercial, right? 00:30:20.240 --> 00:30:20.880 Can you hear me now? 00:30:21.039 --> 00:30:21.519 Exactly, right? 00:30:21.839 --> 00:30:22.559 Can you hear me now? 00:30:23.680 --> 00:30:24.400 Is this possible? 00:30:24.559 --> 00:30:27.359 Um, yeah, so I think Franklin's estimate was 30,000. 00:30:27.440 --> 00:30:30.319 He's like, Yeah, he could talk to 30,000 people in this space. 00:30:30.480 --> 00:30:32.000 I mean, that's mind-blowing, right? 00:30:32.160 --> 00:30:41.200 And when you you know about colonial America, and I think that's also what this Cole story shows, is it took effort to really show up to a Whitfield event. 00:30:41.359

--> 00:30:49.440 It really is an astounding cultural moment when you have the difficulty of travel, the fact that you had so much work to do at home. 00:30:49.599 --> 00:30:52.480 Um, these weren't towns of 30,000 people, right? 00:30:52.640 --> 00:30:53.920 They came from afar. 00:30:54.160 --> 00:31:00.400 The impact that the Great Awakening had culturally on America is also, I think, very profound. 00:31:00.559 --> 00:31:08.400 Um, you can't read a book on the American Revolution without someone mentioning, you know, oh yes, uh, was it Herman Husband of the North Carolina regulators? 00:31:08.559 --> 00:31:14.720 Like he was changed by the Great Awakening and left his elite background to join the common people in North Carolina. 00:31:14.799 --> 00:31:16.480 Um, it changed so much. 00:31:16.640 --> 00:31:29.440 And so I think another thing that a lot of students that I've taught in kind of general survey classes struggle with is that evangelicalism is so mainstream here, they can't imagine it changing culture. 00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:31.920 But it truly did in this moment. 00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:37.599 And so I think that's another reason that the Cole story works so well and kind of getting us off the ground talking to everything about that. 00:31:38.559 --> 00:31:42.160 Also, gets at Dan, your point about the Calvinist revival, right? 00:31:42.319 --> 00:31:46.559 Because this is clearly a reformed Calvinist experience he has, right? 00:31:46.720 --> 00:31:52.880 It takes him two years after he's moved at the event to kind of wrestle with his sin, right? 00:31:53.039 --> 00:32:00.400 Come to the fact of how depraved he finally is before the spirit, you know, the old Puritans had this kind of morphology of conversion. 00:32:00.480 --> 00:32:05.920 It was associated with this theologian named Perkins, I think it was William Perkins, who said, you know, there's five steps. 00:32:06.079 --> 00:32:13.519 And a lot of what Cole goes through, at least as he describes it over those two years, is a very Calvinist way of thinking about a conversion. 00:32:13.759 --> 00:32:26.640 There is still some of that old Puritan conversion narrative that may not be as instantaneous as, say, the 19th century, where it's like, you know, you're at a Charles Finney event and it's like, come forward, you're saved, right? 00:32:26.720 --> 00:32:29.279 You know, so it is a kind of transition period. 00:32:29.359 --> 00:32:31.920 But the other thing you brought up, Maggie, is celebrity, right? 00:32:32.079 --> 00:32:34.559 You know, I think I called him a rock star in the story. 00:32:34.640 --> 00:32:36.319 I can't remember that if I did. 00:32:36.559 --> 00:32:40.880 Now, again, we're moving beyond the kind of theological definition here, which is which is fine. 00:32:40.960 --> 00:32:53.519 I think there are these other factors, these cultural factors involved, right, with evangelicalism that, you know, I would in no way, by embracing the Bebington quadrilateral, like

reject or say it's just theology, right? 00:32:53.759 --> 00:33:07.200 So, you know, there's this long history, as I think we'll see in this podcast series of um evangelicals being taken in by powerful, charismatic figures, you know, like Whitfield. 00:33:07.359 --> 00:33:10.880 I mentioned in the story, you know, he had a facial tick. 00:33:10.960 --> 00:33:28.960 He was, you know, what today we would say cross-eyed, which gave in the 18th century world, a larger religious kind of world, people with physical disabilities or or strange appearances have spiritual power because God doesn't use the handsome or the beautiful, right? 00:33:29.119 --> 00:33:30.640 God uses the lowly, right? 00:33:30.720 --> 00:33:32.880 So he must, God must be with Whitfield. 00:33:32.960 --> 00:33:35.440 The spirit must be with him because he looks that way. 00:33:35.599 --> 00:33:40.799 And, you know, all these kinds of things that are attached to the person of Whitfield, his theater training. 00:33:40.960 --> 00:33:43.920 Harry Stout, the historian, calls him the divine dramatist. 00:33:44.079 --> 00:33:55.279 I see this as a thread, you know, moving through televangelists, you know, all this kind of stuff, moving through evangelicalism, which I think this Cole story also captures, as you pointed out, Maggie. 00:33:55.680 --> 00:34:01.519 I think the celebrity, uh, I mean, there's just the fact of the celebrity that's important to trace all the way up to today. 00:34:01.680 --> 00:34:01.920 Yeah. 00:34:02.160 --> 00:34:16.159 There's also, though, celebrity um is a part of, I think, evangelicalism that also includes the open air preaching that uh Whitfield was known for, which is that there's a lot of um extra church activity in evangelicalism. 00:34:16.239 --> 00:34:16.400 Yes. 00:34:16.719 --> 00:34:27.840 If you think that uh parachurch, parachurch or extra ecclesial, if you want to use a bigger word, that is really, in some ways, at least in certain times and places, as actually where the main action's happening. 00:34:27.920 --> 00:34:29.519 It's actually not in the church as proper. 00:34:29.599 --> 00:34:33.280 It's in the parachurch, it's in the revival circuits, it's in the print world. 00:34:33.440 --> 00:34:36.960 No religious tradition, no Christian tradition has everything right within the church. 00:34:37.199 --> 00:34:41.039 I think evangelicalism is is sort of known for this. 00:34:41.199 --> 00:34:52.480 Um sometimes that's in in theological terms, uh, evangelicals are criticized for having what we call like a low, a low view of the church or a low ecclesiology, meaning it's pretty informal. 00:34:52.639 --> 00:34:58.480 There's things that other Christian traditions have that really have to happen in the church, like the Eucharist or something like that. 00:34:58.719 --> 00:35:09.519 Evangelicals are the ones that are a little more squishy on that stuff, but there's also this sense that the church is just part of a much bigger ecosystem or infrastructure of how the religion is practiced. 00:35:09.840 --> 00:35:15.599 And I think there's sort of novelties happening in the 18th century around open air preaching. 00:35:15.760 --> 00:35:25.519 I know Wesley was sort of controversial in in the UK as well for introducing open air preaching because it seemed like this is a different power center from the pastor or the priest in the church. 00:35:25.760 --> 00:35:38.639 Suddenly your your congregants are now going to this open air thing where this guy's saying something that's a little different than what you're saying in your church, and it it's not just an interesting new practice, it's actually like a another way of being a Christian. 00:35:38.960 --> 00:35:43.519 Um, and then the celebrity is another part of this, which is disconnected from church proper. 00:35:43.599 --> 00:35:51.679 And it's much more about advertising, about print, about coming to see this, you know, amazing attraction that is a form of entertainment, you could say, at some level. 00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:59.679 Anyway, that's all to say that that that's a really interesting, really rich part of evangelicalism is actually the stuff happening outside of the formal church structures. 00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:10.639 And I think too, that's one of the reasons why it flourished so much in the American colonies, is that there wasn't necessarily the structures built to have established churches in a lot of places. 00:36:10.719 --> 00:36:12.960 I mean, this is a little bit more second-grade awakening stuff. 00:36:13.039 --> 00:36:19.039 The fact that, like, that push westward, there simply weren't enough seminaries to actually get preachers in pulpits. 00:36:19.119 --> 00:36:22.239 And so you did have to have itinerant kind of circuits. 00:36:22.400 --> 00:36:27.840 And that fits so well with this evangelical model that people like would go to it, right? 00:36:27.920 --> 00:36:30.079 And you would trap, you'd be a traveling pastor. 00:36:30.159 --> 00:36:40.000 And now some historians have linked that with an anti-intellectual component to American evangelicalism, which is also something that we can kind of talk about, and I'm sure we will talk about in future episodes. 00:36:40.239 --> 00:36:47.039 This idea that there's a sometimes suspicious attitude towards seminaries or people with too many credentials. 00:36:47.199 --> 00:36:54.400 It's like, oh, you've spent too much time thinking about this and not enough time doing it, or you're not really listening to the spirit, you're listening to books, right? 00:36:54.559 --> 00:37:01.280 I definitely grew up hearing some sermons that said, you know, the best thing that could ever happen to American Christianity is if every Christian bookstore burned down. 00:37:01.360 --> 00:37:01.519 Yeah. 00:37:01.679 --> 00:37:01.840 Right? 00:37:01.920 --> 00:37:10.079 Like that kind of sentiment that all you need is the Bible and you hear it from someone, but you know, it is about that

personal uh relationship. 00:37:15.679 --> 00:37:20.239 This was the whole the whole debate among old light, new light, and old side, new side, right? 00:37:20.320 --> 00:37:25.519 I I talked about the law college before, kind of unincredited unaccredited little Bible school, right? 00:37:25.599 --> 00:37:26.880 Run by William Tennant. 00:37:27.039 --> 00:37:31.440 Or you had this thing in New London, Connecticut called the Shepherd's Tent. 00:37:31.599 --> 00:37:37.119 It was where the radical evangelist in the 18th century, James Davenport, studied. 00:37:37.280 --> 00:37:45.280 And it was a complete rejection of the kind of intellectualism of the Harvard-trained or Yale-trained minister. 00:37:45.519 --> 00:37:50.320 So I think part of that bucking of the kind of trained preacher, right? 00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:51.679 You just need the Holy Spirit, right? 00:37:51.760 --> 00:37:55.760 And this, again, like you said, Maggie, this blossoms in the in the 19th century, right? 00:37:55.920 --> 00:38:02.960 But it's even present in the 18th century with these alternative ways of training, if you can call it that. 00:38:03.119 --> 00:38:06.800 And it also suggests that a lot of people might be listening to this. 00:38:06.880 --> 00:38:09.280 Or I'm also, you know, you brought up your students, Maggie. 00:38:09.360 --> 00:38:10.639 I think of my students too. 00:38:10.800 --> 00:38:20.400 The new lights, the evangelicals, actually in the 18th century were, for lack of, I hate to throw this term out because it's a loaded term today, but they were progressives, right? 00:38:20.559 --> 00:38:23.280 They were the ones who were challenging the tradition. 00:38:23.440 --> 00:38:26.079 They were challenging the authority of the minister. 00:38:26.320 --> 00:38:28.880 They were saying there's something more than what you're doing. 00:38:28.960 --> 00:38:40.960 I know this is the way we've done it for 50 years or 100 years here in America or in the British Atlantic world, but now we're offering a new way of thinking about religion. 00:38:41.199 --> 00:38:52.480 You know, progressive, I mean then in the sense that they're they're challenging every part of the traditional, not only congregation, congregational life, but also communities, right? 00:38:52.559 --> 00:38:55.920 You know, I used to travel to Philadelphia a lot when I lived in Pennsylvania. 00:38:56.000 --> 00:38:58.639 And there's this little town there called Noshaminy, Pennsylvania. 00:38:58.719 --> 00:39:00.880 It's outside of Philadelphia, it's in Bucks County. 00:39:00.960 --> 00:39:05.840 And there's still literally two churches almost across the street from each other that go back to the 18th century. 00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:07.679 One is the new light, one is the old light. 00:39:07.760 --> 00:39:19.039 And you know, you just imagine what that community, which was just a you know, village of probably at the most a thousand, two thousand, you know, how that divided that to quote a 1960 civil rights thing, right? 00:39:19.119 --> 00:39:23.920 The outside agitators were the evangelicals kind of coming in and disrupting things. 00:39:24.480 --> 00:39:27.360 And they were giving new opportunities to certain groups too. 00:39:27.440 --> 00:39:33.039 I mean, I more so in the second great awakening, but the first great awakening also women were more involved. 00:39:33.199 --> 00:39:38.320 They were more outspoken, more um able to show like an emotional connection to spirituality. 00:39:38.480 --> 00:39:45.440 It's one of the things the old lights criticized about the new lights was the fact that like the women were too vocal and too involved in this. 00:39:45.760 --> 00:39:48.639 Yeah, and and you know, you could talk about Whitfield too. 00:39:48.719 --> 00:39:51.039 I think we'll get to this in a future episode, right? 00:39:51.280 --> 00:40:00.639 But you had many of these evangelicals, their progressivism was limited in the sense that they, you know, they were the first people to preach to the enslaved populations in the South. 00:40:00.719 --> 00:40:05.360 But, you know, if you take Whitfield as an example, he clearly he owned slaves, right? 00:40:05.599 --> 00:40:07.519 They weren't abolitionists by any means. 00:40:07.679 --> 00:40:14.400 I mean, really, there's no one really who's much of an abolitionist except a handful of Quakers in 1730, right? 00:40:14.480 --> 00:40:14.639 Yeah. 00:40:15.039 --> 00:40:26.960 Thinking about um, John, what you were just saying about the the way that in this period, sort of the evangelicals were the, if progressive is the right term, I think of someone that I know a little more about in the 20th century. 00:40:27.119 --> 00:40:29.440 Um, he was the founder of the Evangelical Free Church. 00:40:29.679 --> 00:40:32.639 He was the first president of the Evangelical Free Church, named Arnold Olson. 00:40:32.800 --> 00:40:32.960 Yeah. 00:40:33.119 --> 00:40:35.760 Evangelical Free Church is a is a as its name. 00:40:35.840 --> 00:40:44.719 It it's a it's a church that broke away from the state churches in in Scandinavian countries, and then the immigrants uh left to North America. 00:40:44.960 --> 00:40:51.679 And so he he would often talk about how uh the free churches were on the what he called the left wing of the Reformation. 00:40:51.840 --> 00:40:58.239 And what he wanted to do by that is differentiate between what is often called the magisterial Protestant tradition. 00:40:58.320 --> 00:41:04.320 So this would be like Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and the churches that directly come, Lutherans, Presbyterians, so forth. 00:41:04.480 --> 00:41:10.320 And then the left wing to the left of that are the ones who are even uh sort of gonna go more radical. 00:41:10.559 --> 00:41:15.199 And they often, someone like Olson would say, like, the the original reformers didn't go far enough. 00:41:15.280 --> 00:41:17.440 Like they kept too much of the tradition. 00:41:17.679 --> 00:41:22.800 Some of that's the

theology, some of that's the state church collaboration, some of it's the politics. 00:41:23.119 --> 00:41:28.719 And so the people to the further, you know, further left, you can think of real further left, sort of like the Anabaptists or someone. 00:41:29.039 --> 00:41:30.320 That's where Olson placed himself. 00:41:30.400 --> 00:41:35.760 I think he'd be a pretty typical 20th century, you know, evangelical who would put himself like that. 00:41:35.840 --> 00:41:51.440 But you can think of there's a in a weird way that doesn't sort of comport to how we talk about evangelicals in the politics today, but there's a there's a left-wing uh radicalism to the way that a lot of revivalist type Christians approach their religion. 00:41:51.599 --> 00:41:59.280 They want to rethink things, they want to get rid of what they consider sort of the accretions of the centuries, um dead orthodoxy. 00:41:59.519 --> 00:42:07.360 Yeah, and often that's directly the Catholics, so there's a strong anti-Catholicism in in evangelicalism for most, you know, most of the last 250 years. 00:42:07.519 --> 00:42:19.119 And then there's uh also an unwillingness, though as Whitfield's an example, it doesn't always go there and even even mostly go there, to question some basic social conventions as well, whether it's around gender or race. 00:42:19.440 --> 00:42:27.599 Many of the sort of abolitionists during uh early 19th century, so we're talking in the lead up to the Civil War, would have come out of the same sort of tradition. 00:42:27.840 --> 00:42:34.880 Now that's not everybody, that's not even most people, but that is a source of it, is this willingness to question uh received tradition. 00:42:35.039 --> 00:42:47.280 And it's also what other Christians don't like about the evangelicals is they seem to be um using their their own sort of authority um to question things that have or others seem to be settled uh settled issues. 00:42:47.519 --> 00:42:56.159 So it's an interesting dynamic that plays with some of the ways we talk about conservative and liberal in contemporary politics, but don't necessarily map on to the history as well. 00:42:56.320 --> 00:42:56.480 Yeah. 00:42:56.719 --> 00:43:01.920 And again, I think that does go back to one of the things that's in Beppington's quadrilateral, which is that biblicism, right? 00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:12.159 That idea that like if the if the Bible is the final authority, that is an authority that you can draw from as an individual and take a stance that is pretty radical. 00:43:12.320 --> 00:43:12.559 Yeah. 00:43:12.719 --> 00:43:12.960 Right. 00:43:13.119 --> 00:43:22.079 And you have a confidence in it that can withstand a lot of the social pressure that under older systems tradition like would collapse, right? 00:43:22.480 --> 00:43:23.679 So yeah, there's a link there for sure. 00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:30.239 The idea of Biblicism, though, it's I mean, I know we're talking about it in a kind of, because I brought this up, a

kind of progressive radical way, right? 00:43:30.320 --> 00:43:33.760 But it's it's a a sort of Protestant biblicism, right? 00:43:34.000 --> 00:43:52.239 Where you know you could have evangelicals in the early 19th century South who are also reading the Bible, right, individualistically and coming up with the idea that you know slavery is okay, or you know, they're using it to defend the status quo. 00:43:52.320 --> 00:43:52.480 Right. 00:43:52.639 --> 00:43:54.960 So, I mean, that's much more of a 19th century thing. 00:43:55.119 --> 00:43:59.599 I think if his there's again, Harry Stout, if he's right in the subtitle. 00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:09.440 Of his book on Whitfield, where he says the first great awakening is the, I'm not going to get it exactly right, but I think it the the birth of modern evangelicalism, right? 00:44:09.760 --> 00:44:20.880 I think it is fair to say that it's it is born out of a kind of very for the 18th century, progressive, radical, challenging the status quo kind of thing. 00:44:20.960 --> 00:44:35.519 Now, again, if we want to sort of be ahistorical about it, and I don't want to, I don't wanna um I don't want to use that as a bad thing, but if you want to say, you know, well, Whitfield had slaves or whatever, that's something we have to point out. 00:44:35.679 --> 00:44:40.320 But the question would be, would be like abolition even be an option for him in the 18th century? 00:44:40.400 --> 00:44:42.559 That doesn't take him off the hook by any means. 00:44:42.800 --> 00:44:46.639 But, you know, actually preaching to slaves was as progressive as you could get back then. 00:44:46.800 --> 00:44:51.039 The the that's more of a historical claim than an ethical or or theological claim. 00:44:51.119 --> 00:45:06.719 Aaron Powell There's one debate among historians at least that spills out into the broader conversation sometimes around what we're talking about, which is the connection of the revivals in the 1730s uh to the 1750s and then the American Revolution. 00:45:06.880 --> 00:45:08.639 Um get me started on this thing. 00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:10.800 Well, I want to get you started a little. 00:45:10.960 --> 00:45:13.280 Um, but it's an interesting question. 00:45:13.360 --> 00:45:19.199 I think it gets it to the heart of a lot of the ways Americans have thought about the relationship of religion and politics ever since. 00:45:19.360 --> 00:45:24.960 Yeah, John, if you if you can just sketch the sort of how have under how have historians understood that relationship. 00:45:25.119 --> 00:45:28.480 I know there have been promoters and skeptics, but then and then where do you land on that? 00:45:28.800 --> 00:45:43.280 It really started in in in 1966 when a a uh I want to say it was at Harvard, um actually English professor, uh Alan Hymer Heemer, wrote, wrote a book called Religion in the American Mind. 00:45:43.440 --> 00:45:59.760 And what he argued was that the new lights, new sides, the evangelicals, as we're calling them, that were involved in the first great awakening, they were the ones who were in 1770, 1760, late 1760s and up to 1776, were the revolutionaries. 00:45:59.920 --> 00:46:07.679 And the old sides, because of their tradition, their conservatism, this is a nice fit with what we were just talking about, they did not support the American Revolution. 00:46:07.840 --> 00:46:08.800 And that was his argument. 00:46:08.880 --> 00:46:15.199 He drew a through line between the revivals and um and 1776. 00:46:15.280 --> 00:46:20.960 And and you see Hemert's influence in a lot of contemporary historians. 00:46:21.119 --> 00:46:26.159 You know, there's a biography of George Whitfield that's titled Spiritual Founding Father, right? 00:46:26.239 --> 00:46:29.760 Which seems to have Heimert's thesis written all over it. 00:46:29.840 --> 00:46:35.199 Uh Harry Stat, who I've now mentioned a couple of times, has completely bought into Heimert's thesis. 00:46:35.360 --> 00:46:44.960 But in the 80s, it came under severe attack by a historian named John Butler who suggested that, you know, there was no real connection whatsoever. 00:46:45.039 --> 00:46:51.039 And another Princeton historian named John Murrin, who suggested that there was no real connection whatsoever between the two events. 00:46:51.199 --> 00:47:04.400 Uh, Murrin has this famous piece in reviews of American history where he says um it's called No Revolution, No Awakening question mark, in which it's a really compelling case that Heemert was very, you know. 00:47:04.480 --> 00:47:08.960 I mean, Charles Chauncey, an old side, was a, you know, a revolutionary. 00:47:09.039 --> 00:47:12.559 I mean, you know, he points out how all of these old siders were revolutionaries. 00:47:12.639 --> 00:47:18.320 There was no connection particularly between evangelical, the new side born-again crowd, and this. 00:47:18.559 --> 00:47:31.679 So it was, I want to say largely debunked, but there's still people, very good historians who still kind of subtly, even people like Noel and Marsden who have subtly, uh subtly kind of embraced this idea, although not as overtly, right? 00:47:31.840 --> 00:47:34.239 They they realize that Hemer got a lot of things wrong. 00:47:34.400 --> 00:47:42.639 You know, I don't know how much you want to, how much we should go into this, uh, but but you hear now, I wrote a piece in Commonwealth a few years ago. 00:47:42.880 --> 00:47:54.320 You see now many modern day conservative evangelicals, what I call MAGA evangelicals, who are calling for, you know, the only way to save this country is through a spiritual revival. 00:47:54.480 --> 00:47:56.480 Look what happened in the Great Awakening. 00:47:56.559 --> 00:47:58.480 They're invoking this historiography. 00:47:58.559 --> 00:48:02.239 They don't even, I don't think they even know that they've never read any of these people, right? 00:48:02.400 --> 00:48:10.639 But they're invoking this idea that somewhere along the way, and I have a hunch

who who led them to this, they believe that the Great Awakening caused the revolution. 00:48:10.719 --> 00:48:17.840 And thus, if we have a Great Awakening today, we will have another freedom will be restored, or you know, free, you know, it's all politically charged. 00:48:17.920 --> 00:48:19.679 But they're tapping into that. 00:48:21.280 --> 00:48:31.599 So can we can we separate because that that's a specific connection between the first Great Awakening and the revolution, that you could or you know, depending on how you read the evidence, you could agree or not. 00:48:31.760 --> 00:48:41.599 Is there a deeper or wider, I'm not sure which metaphor is better, um, sense of the relationship between evangelicalism and popular democracy? 00:48:41.760 --> 00:48:45.679 And and not in a I don't mean it in a pro or anti-democracy way necessarily. 00:48:45.840 --> 00:48:53.920 I'm just because I'm thinking also about like, you know, when we get to the second weight awakening, uh, there's the famous book by Nathan Hatch about the democratization of American Christianity. 00:48:54.000 --> 00:49:09.119 And there he's talking about this sense of there's a more, there's a stronger egalitarian spirit in the Second Great Awakening that you can see connecting to arguments for, you know, women's rights and and in some cases abolition, uh abolition of slavery and things. 00:49:09.199 --> 00:49:17.519 So he's making a connection of sorts there between the way evangelicals practice their religion and sort of democratizing uh movements. 00:49:17.760 --> 00:49:22.800 So I know if you say that too much in certain settings, then you get roped up into politics about today and stuff. 00:49:22.880 --> 00:49:26.239 But is that something we I don't know, what do people think about that that connection? 00:49:26.480 --> 00:49:44.960 Well, I think one thing you have to be careful with when you talk the way you're you just explained this, and I'm not rejecting what you said, because I think there's a lot of truth to it, and I think Hatch is right, but uh there's a danger when you try to connect the the Great Awakening or evangelicalism to some political movement. 00:49:45.119 --> 00:49:53.119 Not that you shouldn't do it, but the danger is you start then to perceive, and this gets back to our whole definitional question about the Bebing to quadrilateral and theology, right? 00:49:53.199 --> 00:50:16.239 And the theological definition, you start taking what was meant to be, and this is my beef with the with the Great Awakening to the revolution argument, you take what was meant to be a spiritual movement, and suddenly now its only significant purpose was not that it changed people's lives or that they got saved or that they're converted and their life has now become better. 00:50:16.400 --> 00:50:22.239 It turns these revivals into little more than a political movement. 00:50:22.559 --> 00:50:41.840 Now, having said that, I think there's a certain egalitarianism within the, you know, if you can if you make the argument that the American Revolution was sort of, as certain kinds of historians that we often call neo-progressives say, are like, you know, was all about egalitarianism and equality, like the French Revolution, right? 00:50:42.239 --> 00:50:51.119 Uh I'm not sure I buy that argument that the egalitarianism, like I don't see the American Revolution as a particularly egalitarian revolution. 00:50:51.360 --> 00:50:56.800 So now when you move to the early 19th century, I think times have changed, right? 00:50:56.960 --> 00:51:02.400 And America's becoming more democratic, as Hatch argues in the democratization of American evangelicalism. 00:51:02.559 --> 00:51:09.440 And there, I think evangelicalism, democracy, consumer culture, market economies, all these things, they're all of a mix. 00:51:09.519 --> 00:51:11.360 It's sometimes hard to pull them all apart. 00:51:11.519 --> 00:51:11.679 Right. 00:51:11.760 --> 00:51:20.639 You know, like you have Lawrence Moore's book, Selling Religion, you know, and you have mark the marketplace of religion, the consumer, you know, you see church shopping for the first time. 00:51:20.719 --> 00:51:26.639 You see people making choices in the ballot booth, you see people making choices to free will to get saved. 00:51:26.960 --> 00:51:27.119 Right. 00:51:27.280 --> 00:51:28.880 You know, I'm gonna go forward, right? 00:51:29.039 --> 00:51:32.000 As opposed to I'm just sitting here and the spirit's gonna hit me. 00:51:32.159 --> 00:51:36.000 That's a different era, which I hope we'll have time to explore in this series. 00:51:36.239 --> 00:51:36.400 Right. 00:51:36.719 --> 00:51:47.760 I do think, like, in just thinking about connections, like they do come up, but I wouldn't say it's this wide sweeping, we can explain patriots and loyalists by looking at the Great Awakening. 00:51:47.840 --> 00:51:50.320 Like it's just things don't get divided that easily. 00:51:50.480 --> 00:51:59.280 But we can look at things that the Great Awakening facilitated, willingness to challenge authority, for example, or willingness to set aside elitism for some folks. 00:51:59.360 --> 00:52:07.039 Like I brought up the North Carolina regulators, like uh that movement was all about pushing back against the royal governor's pressures on not moving westward, right? 00:52:07.280 --> 00:52:14.960 And there was a, you know, a a more, I don't know, they were more acculturated to those kinds of challenges because of the Great Awakening. 00:52:15.039 --> 00:52:25.440 Um, and another thing, too, that we've been talking about is just the changing Atlantic world and the way that, in a way, the Great Awakening did somewhat bring the colonies together. 00:52:25.519 --> 00:52:27.920 We talk a lot about uh the French and Indian War. 00:52:28.000 --> 00:52:29.599 I like to call it the Great War for Empire. 00:52:29.760 --> 00:52:32.400 Can't remember which historian made that case, but I buy it. 00:52:32.639 -->

00:52:45.119 Like that brought the colonies together, but so did things like the Great Awakening and reading the same sermons and the advertisement, like um Whitfield, I'm pretty sure it's the phrases um peddler and divinity. 00:52:45.440 --> 00:52:49.280 Peddler, yeah, it's Frank Lambert, the title of Frank Lambert's biography. 00:52:49.360 --> 00:52:59.119 Yeah, um, and I think it comes from an actual like legislative uh component where they're like, do we actually challenge the fact that they're peddling religion um and during the Great Awakening? 00:52:59.199 --> 00:53:04.719 And and the fact that there's and it's not mass culture to the way that we think of it at all, right? 00:53:04.880 --> 00:53:06.960 Like this is still colonial America. 00:53:07.119 --> 00:53:09.440 You're getting around on a horse, right? 00:53:09.519 --> 00:53:11.039 You're not leaving your town. 00:53:11.119 --> 00:53:15.519 Like all of these things that we really have to be careful with with talking about. 00:53:15.760 --> 00:53:30.000 But the fact that they can get sermons from Whitfield before Whitfield is there, and that people in Britain have read Edwards, um, all of those are parts of the dynamics that certainly led to revolutionary sentiment spreading. 00:53:30.239 --> 00:53:34.320 Um, and so there are links there that are much more cultural than religious. 00:53:34.639 --> 00:53:39.440 And I would say the spiritually revived were the ones that were willing to stand up against Parliament. 00:53:39.920 --> 00:53:44.159 I guess the way I would see it, Maggie, is you're definitely right. 00:53:44.239 --> 00:53:47.840 I think Whitfield's a product of a consumer revolution, right? 00:53:48.000 --> 00:53:48.800 Of goods. 00:53:49.199 --> 00:53:53.920 You know, just like people are getting like Wedgewood China for the first time in the 1740s. 00:53:54.000 --> 00:53:57.440 Like Whitfield is using what today we would call the media. 00:53:57.679 --> 00:53:58.800 He's got advancement. 00:53:59.119 --> 00:54:03.360 He takes out ads in the newspaper, like this this network of communications and so forth. 00:54:03.440 --> 00:54:06.559 The question, I guess, is and maybe you agree or disagree with this. 00:54:06.639 --> 00:54:10.000 I'm I'm thinking in the in your framing of the Atlantic world here, right? 00:54:10.159 --> 00:54:17.840 To me, this is a transatlantic revival because Whitfield is not just in the 13 colonies, you so-called uniting them. 00:54:18.000 --> 00:54:27.840 He's uniting, he's he's shrinking and metaphorically shrinking the Atlantic, making the colonies much more ensconced within this transatlantic revivalist movement. 00:54:27.920 --> 00:54:35.760 That's where the unity for me is, rather than in looking back from the revolution and saying this is what got them all together. 00:54:35.920 --> 00:54:40.400 You can compare the unity around Whitfield's sermons and so forth, which I don't deny. 00:54:40.480 --> 00:54:42.000 It's certainly true in the colonies. 00:54:42.159 --> 00:54:49.679 You know, Ben Franklin tried to unite the colonies in 1754 at the Albany Congress, and it just was it was a disaster. 00:54:49.920 --> 00:54:51.519 I would look at it more transatlantic. 00:54:51.760 --> 00:54:57.599 That would be at least my critique of this kind of Heimart thesis as it's employed today. 00:54:57.840 --> 00:55:10.239 I do think, though, you're right in the sense that um Noel and Marsden and others who are writing who who embrace Heimart, they would talk about it in terms of the cultural, you know. 00:55:10.400 --> 00:55:12.559 I think they would agree with you on that sense. 00:55:12.639 --> 00:55:15.280 And I think they're probably a little bit right too. 00:55:19.840 --> 00:55:37.599 One thing we can talk about, and Maggie mentioned it early on with her students and how they have a hard time imagining how evangelicalism could be disruptive or sort of not the mainstream version, is actually how uh historians have thought about evangelicalism in relation to American Christianity. 00:55:37.840 --> 00:55:51.920 And for those not in the know of the historiography, uh, which is most people, uh, that's actually been an ongoing conversation, is how central to American religion is evangelicalism versus how much of it should we think of it as more of a fringe? 00:55:52.000 --> 00:55:53.760 And sort of what do you put at the center of the story? 00:55:53.920 --> 00:55:59.840 Is it the denominations that we now call the mainline uh denominations? 00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:02.559 Even that term implies something about them being central. 00:56:03.119 --> 00:56:08.079 Is it actually there is no center, it's just a lot of pluralism and diversity? 00:56:09.199 --> 00:56:20.320 Or as uh a bunch of historians have sort of argued or assumed in the last few generations, it's actually revivalistic Christianity, Protestant Christianity that we call evangelicalism. 00:56:20.480 --> 00:56:37.440 And I was in preparing for this, I was going back and I looked at one of these key essays you get assigned in grad school uh still by the historian Henry May, and it's from 1964 in the American Historical Review, which is sort of like the most important journal in the field of American history. 00:56:37.599 --> 00:56:42.320 So uh not American history, I guess like history, because it's it's just called the American Historical Review, it's all history. 00:56:42.480 --> 00:56:46.559 It was called the recovery of American Religious History in 1964. 00:56:46.880 --> 00:57:10.239 And what he was saying in all the way back then was that the that there had been a move in his lifetime, you know, in his career to make religion much more central to how we talk about all of American history, but then within religious history, that the type of religion that be that was central was basically from the Puritans to the revivalists type religion. 00:57:10.559 --> 00:57:27.920 And you can think of he mentions people like Perry Miller, who

in the 1930s is sort of pulling up the Puritans from the dustbin and and in some ways making, you know, oh we'll take it way too far, probably, than what Miller would intend, but sort of making the Puritans as like the core of what it means to be American. 00:57:28.159 --> 00:57:32.000 They're the original, you know, the pilgrims in Plymouth Rock and so forth. 00:57:32.320 --> 00:57:40.239 But there's there are a lot of other scholars, um, Timothy Timothy Smith would be one that was looking at revivalism in the 50s, and basically saying, no, this is like the main story. 00:57:40.400 --> 00:57:45.840 The main story are basic, you know, white evangel what we call evangelical revivalist type people. 00:57:46.320 --> 00:57:59.679 May saying that in the 60s, and by the 70s and 80s, we have the people we've mentioned a lot here, Mark Knoll and Nathan Hatch and George Marsden really making that claim, saying, like, this is actually, if you want to study American religious history, you have to study. 00:58:00.480 --> 00:58:02.639 You have to at least know about evangelicals. 00:58:02.880 --> 00:58:08.880 There's a lot of other groups that we don't say that about, and we'd see them as more of as um not central. 00:58:09.039 --> 00:58:11.760 I don't want to say marginal, but just not central to the story. 00:58:12.000 --> 00:58:13.840 Um, I wonder what we make of that move. 00:58:14.000 --> 00:58:21.360 I mean, we all study evangelicals, so we might be predisposed to say, yeah, of course, like you know, we're we're on center stage. 00:58:21.599 --> 00:58:34.639 But I know that's been a controversial view, certainly in more recent years, where uh a lot of historians, even some trained by the Mark Noel and George Marson and others, have said, actually, that's you know, that that's a blinkered reading uh of the past. 00:58:34.719 --> 00:58:36.079 It's almost self-serving in some ways. 00:58:36.159 --> 00:58:40.000 It makes evangelicals get to be the center of attention, whether for good or ill. 00:58:40.239 --> 00:58:42.320 But uh anyway, that that's a debate now. 00:58:42.400 --> 00:58:44.320 I I wonder if either you have thoughts about that. 00:58:44.719 --> 00:58:48.719 I mean, I think it really depends on what type of story you're telling. 00:58:49.119 --> 00:58:59.199 If you're looking at the relationship between religion and politics, um, evangelicals are often ones that either are demanding a seat at the table or have the central seat at the table. 00:58:59.519 --> 00:59:09.039 But if you're looking at um like grassroots activism in the civil rights movement, evangelicals aren't necessarily going to be the center of that story. 00:59:09.519 --> 00:59:24.400 And so it does depend on the perspective and the time as well, like where you're looking at, because the mainline churches that we would identify today, a lot of them had active evangelical components in the 18th and early 19th century. 00:59:24.639 --> 00:59:30.880 So it again, this is where we get

into the this is why historians love to fight about how we define evangelicalism. 00:59:30.960 --> 00:59:42.719 And if you find someone who's an 18th century historian versus a 20th century historian, we might choose different definitions to serve our purposes because it's like we also have to justify who's part of our story. 00:59:43.280 --> 00:59:50.800 And so we have to come up with our own kind of boundaries around that, and that's part of what is the fun of trying to define evangelicalism. 00:59:51.440 --> 01:00:03.679 I think that there is something to making the claim that evangelicals like ourselves, right, who are somewhat within the fold studying our own traditions. 01:00:04.239 --> 01:00:10.000 Um, we like to put the evangelicals we identify with at as the center of the story, right? 01:00:10.079 --> 01:00:12.880 There's a self-identification there that I think is helpful. 01:00:13.360 --> 01:00:26.239 I don't know necessarily whether that's like problematic in the sense that it is good to have people who are the so-called insiders telling these stories because there's stuff we'll pick up on. 01:00:26.639 --> 01:00:36.159 But I do like that in this field we do have now more people that are coming in and starting to like point out the ways that that has put shadows, another part of history, right? 01:00:36.400 --> 01:00:40.639 There's a writer whose name escapes me right now, but she once said that every strength has a shadow. 01:00:41.039 --> 01:00:43.280 I think that's so true in the writing of history, right? 01:00:43.360 --> 01:00:49.599 Like you can have really strong histories that tell amazing stories, but they have overshadowed something else. 01:00:50.079 --> 01:00:54.880 I think that might be true when we look at religious history and the emphasis on evangelicalism. 01:00:55.599 --> 01:01:05.920 I think there have been non-evangelical historians who do not claim evangelical faith, who have made this exact same point. 01:01:06.079 --> 01:01:10.719 You know, um you know, uh uh I mentioned John Butler before. 01:01:10.880 --> 01:01:13.920 There was this there was this I don't think he ever published it. 01:01:14.000 --> 01:01:20.719 It was an uncirculated paper that went around to everybody everybody read it called Born Again History, right? 01:01:20.800 --> 01:01:34.079 And he took on this idea that you know the evangelicals are in a position Mars to Noll, these kinds of historians are in a position of power, they're well funded, and thus they get to they they get to shape the narratives. 01:01:34.320 --> 01:01:41.280 The point about the point about time, back to the original question, the point about time that you mentioned, I think is important, right? 01:01:41.440 --> 01:01:45.039 I have a hard time arguing that against the idea. 01:01:45.119 --> 01:02:01.119 There's been some who push back, but I have a hard time arguing you know, the early 19th century, during the period of the so-called Second Great Awakening, or the from

1800 to say the Civil War, evangelicals are the dominant form of Christianity. 01:02:01.360 --> 01:02:07.440 You know, there's been people like Amanda Porterfield and uh I can't remember his first name, uh what is it? 01:02:07.760 --> 01:02:09.840 Modern John Modern. 01:02:10.719 --> 01:02:13.119 You know, and others who have challenged this notion. 01:02:13.199 --> 01:02:22.320 There's others who pointed to like there's been good work uh by Chris Grasso and others on like deism and skepticism and all of this in the early 19th century. 01:02:22.480 --> 01:02:25.599 But they I think they're friend its fringe in that period. 01:02:25.760 --> 01:02:34.960 I think after the Civil War, right, with you know the fundamentalist modernist controversy, the mod, you know, I think it gets much more the story gets much more complicated. 01:02:35.039 --> 01:02:39.440 I don't know if I would and immigration and other immigration, urbanization, yeah. 01:02:39.599 --> 01:02:42.960 I wouldn't even know how to answer those questions in the present. 01:02:50.159 --> 01:02:52.159 Well, this was a great discussion. 01:02:52.480 --> 01:02:54.000 So many things to think about. 01:02:54.159 --> 01:02:55.920 This is only episode one. 01:02:56.320 --> 01:02:58.719 We, you know, have many more to come. 01:02:58.880 --> 01:02:59.679 Stay with us. 01:02:59.840 --> 01:03:13.119 But I think the some of the big takeaways, at least as I'm hearing the discussion, um, I think we we are all in agreement that, you know, we don't want to throw out the theological Bebington quadrilateral kind of definition of evangelicalism. 01:03:13.199 --> 01:03:14.320 We may want to nuance it. 01:03:14.400 --> 01:03:40.800 We may want to put it alongside other ways of thinking about evangelicalism, but but I think uh, you know, the new births is central as the Nathan Cole story kind of plays out with the new birth being central, but also a lot of good discussion, kind of, I think, about evangelical celebrity, about evangelical uh the way they turn to these uh charismatic figures, the transdenominational dimension, if that's the word, of evangelicalism, right? 01:03:40.880 --> 01:03:41.840 It's not bound. 01:03:42.000 --> 01:03:51.360 Uh, I really like the discussion about, you know, the sort of radical or progressive nature of evangelicalism, challenging, always challenging, at least in the 18th century, right? 01:03:51.599 --> 01:03:53.519 Challenging sort of tradition. 01:03:53.920 --> 01:03:55.920 So um, again, a lot to think about. 01:03:56.000 --> 01:04:03.039 And again, what really excites me is a lot of these themes will be coming back and we'll dig a lot deeper into them into uh future episodes. 01:04:03.199 --> 01:04:13.599 But uh again, these this is the first of three episodes in which uh before we dig deep, we want to kind of just talk about together about the definition of evangelicalism. 01:04:13.679 --> 01:04:14.719 How are we defining it? 01:04:14.800 --> 01:04:15.840 How are we thinking about it? 01:04:15.920 --> 01:04:20.159 Just get some things out on the table, right, through some through some stories here. 01:04:20.480 --> 01:04:25.920 Speaking of stories, in episode two, uh, we're gonna hear a story from Dan Hummel. 01:04:26.079 --> 01:04:27.840 Dan, tell us, give us a teaser. 01:04:28.400 --> 01:04:28.639 Right. 01:04:28.719 --> 01:04:44.159 So we're we're gonna jump ahead uh over a century into the 1870s, and we're gonna look at a power couple, going back to the celebrity theme, of Robert Pearsol Smith and Hannah Whitelesmith, who for just a few years became household names. 01:04:44.239 --> 01:04:48.000 Um, and they represent both a some of the themes we've talked about. 01:04:48.159 --> 01:04:56.719 You'll see those themes picking up in their personal stories and what they're talking about as they become these sort of celebrity preachers that go around Europe and the U.S. 01:04:56.960 --> 01:05:00.000 talking about a new type of holiness uh called the higher life. 01:05:00.159 --> 01:05:03.119 But we'll also see those same themes in their own personal stories as well. 01:05:03.199 --> 01:05:15.920 So that'll open up a whole another conversation, moving away a bit from focusing in on born again or conversion and more to questions of holiness and living and how central those are, what we mean by evangelicalism. 01:05:17.199 --> 01:05:21.199 Thanks for listening to American Evangelicals, a history podcast. 01:05:21.360 --> 01:05:25.599 If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's next. 01:05:25.760 --> 01:05:34.159 And if this episode sparked your curiosity, consider sharing it with someone who wants a deeper, more nuanced understanding of evangelical history. 01:05:34.320 --> 01:05:36.320 Until next time, thanks for listening.